World Cup Bone on the Box: Chiles has plenty more wasps to chew now

Well this could either be a very, very long three weeks without England at the World Cup – or our early exit could serve to allowe us all to enjoy it that much more, writes Steve Bone.

Everyone will have a second team to follow and half the fun will see the nations of the various foreign pundits getting knocked out.

Thierry Henry’s reaction to France’s exit, which will surely come sooner than later, is particularly eagerly-awaited.

England’s failure hasn’t had much effect on Adrian Chiles – at least not on his facial expression.

He always looks like he’s chewing a wasp, but then his normal pastime is watching West Brom and you’d have the same look if you were so afflicted.

Germany v Ghana was a terrific game on Saturday and it was nice to hear Alan Hansen admit all the pundits were shouting at Ghana to go for it during one attack. So it’s not just English people whose second team are AGAP (Anyone Germany Are Playing).

In the same game, Clarence Seedorf took on the role that Statto used to perform so well on Baddiel and Skinner’s Fantasy Football show, telling us 30 per cent of goals in this World Cup had come from balls in from the right.

Later, we had Nigeria v Bosnia and when Peter Odemwingie scoring past Asmir Begovic, it wasn’t the first time a couple of Stoke players had featured on BBC1 at 11.30 on a Saturday night (one hour into MotD).

One of the BBC pundits for that game was Martin Keown, who was regaling viewers with his tale of how he’d earlier joined in a game of football on the beach on the Copacabana. But he didn’t tell the full story.

Apparently when he turned up the locals said (in their language) ‘It’s great to have an Arsenal and England legend playing’.

Then Tony Adams turned up and they said ‘It’s great to have an Arsenal and England legend playing’.

Then Lee Dixon arrived and they said ‘It’s great to have an ITV pundit playing.’